publish

Turn a recorded church service into show-notes and a social hook clip in one pass. Local transcription via whisper.cpp, LLM summary via Claude, ffmpeg-cut portrait clip — wired together in a single Go CLI.

publish [--summerize] [--clip] [--post] [flags] <audio-or-video>

What it does

Given an audio or video recording (mp4, m4a, mp3, wav, ...), publish will:

1. Transcribe the audio locally with whisper.cpp (CUDA / ROCm / Vulkan / Metal / CPU — picked automatically per machine).
2. Summarize (--summerize) the sermon into a Markdown document with speaker, scripture references (KJV), key points, and a memorable quote. Optionally also emit Spotify-for-Podcasters-friendly HTML.
3. Clip (--clip) a 60–90 second hook from the preaching, re-encoded to 1080×1920 portrait (9:16) with a center-crop, capped at 1 GiB — ready to upload to Reels / Shorts / TikTok / X.
4. Post (--post) — Spotify upload integration, not implemented yet.

The transcript is cached at <input>.segments.json, so running multiple modes or re-tuning prompt parameters costs one whisper run.

Quick start

git clone <repo-url> ~/Git\ Repos/summerize
cd ~/Git\ Repos/summerize
make install

make install is interactive: it detects your OS and GPU, walks you through installing system dependencies, builds whisper.cpp with the right backend, downloads a ggml model, and links publish + whisper-cli-<backend> into ~/.local/bin. Re-runnable; each step is idempotent.

Then:

publish --summerize sermon.mp4
publish --clip sermon.mp4
publish --summerize --clip sermon.mp4   # both, one transcribe pass

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH.

Other Make targets

target	what it does
make / make build	build ./publish in the repo
make link	rebuild + link ./publish into ~/.local/bin
make install	interactive end-to-end setup
make doctor	print detected OS / GPU / dependencies and exit
make uninstall	remove the publish symlink
make clean	remove the local publish binary
make test	go test ./...

Modes

Modes are boolean flags; combine freely. Defaults to --summerize if none set.

--summerize

Markdown summary of the message.

publish --summerize sermon.mp4
publish --summerize --spotify sermon.html sermon.mp4
publish --summerize --copy sermon.mp4              # Spotify HTML -> clipboard
publish --summerize --prompt "$(cat notes.md)" sermon.mp4

Key flags:

flag	purpose
--md PATH	Markdown output path; - = stdout, "" = disable. Default <input>.summary.md
--spotify PATH	Also write Spotify-show-notes HTML (subset of HTML their editor accepts)
--copy	Copy the Spotify HTML to the clipboard (wl-copy / xclip / pbcopy)
--prompt TEXT	Producer's notes — pre-written framing the LLM treats as authoritative for title, speaker name, key points. The transcript expands and enriches it

--clip

Pick the best 60–90 second sermon clip and cut it to a portrait social video.

publish --clip sermon.mp4
publish --clip --min 75 --max 90 sermon.mp4
publish --clip --dry-run sermon.mp4                # show the picked window only
publish --clip --copy-codec sermon.mp4             # fast stream copy (skips 9:16 crop)

Key flags:

flag	purpose
--min / --max	clip length bounds in seconds (default 60 / 90)
--out PATH	clip output path (default <input>.clip<ext>)
--copy-codec	use ffmpeg -c copy — fast, but skips the 9:16 portrait crop (stream copy can't apply video filters)
--dry-run	print the picked window but don't run ffmpeg

Video clips are re-encoded to 1080×1920 portrait with a safe center-crop (crop=min(iw,ih*9/16):min(ih,iw*16/9)) that handles any source aspect ratio without distortion, and capped at 1 GiB via ffmpeg's -fs.

--post

Stub. Will eventually push the markdown summary to a Spotify-for-Podcasters episode description.

Shared flags

flag	purpose	default
--summarizer	claude-cli (shells out to claude -p) or claude-api (direct Messages API)	claude-cli
--model	model name (Anthropic API path defaults to claude-sonnet-4-6)	empty
--prompt-summary	override the bundled summary system prompt	bundled
--prompt-clip	override the bundled clip-selector system prompt	bundled
--whisper-bin	whisper.cpp binary; auto-detects best backend if empty	auto
--whisper-model	path to a ggml whisper model (.bin)	~/.cache/whisper.cpp/ggml-base.en.bin
--whisper-lang	force whisper language code	auto-detect
--whisper-threads	thread count	library default
--segments	segments JSON cache path	<input>.segments.json
--keep-transcript	also write <input>.transcript.txt	off
--keep-wav	keep the normalized 16kHz WAV instead of using a tempdir	off
-v	verbose progress to stderr	off

Note on --prompt vs --prompt-summary: --prompt is content (producer's notes that anchor the summary). --prompt-summary is a path to override the system prompt template. Different things; both are intentional.

Backends

When --whisper-bin is not set, publish picks a whisper.cpp backend at runtime by walking this order:

1. Metal (macOS) — uses ~/.local/bin/whisper-cli-metal if present
2. CUDA — whisper-cli-cuda if nvidia-smi -L succeeds
3. ROCm — whisper-cli-rocm if rocminfo succeeds
4. Vulkan — whisper-cli-vulkan if vulkaninfo --summary succeeds
5. CPU — whisper-cli / whisper-cpp / main on PATH

Each step requires both the binary and a working runtime probe; failures fall through to the next backend. The chosen backend is logged on stderr; -v adds diagnostics about which probes were skipped or failed.

make install builds the right backend for your machine. Per-platform build recipes (CUDA, ROCm, Vulkan, Metal) live in CLAUDE.md.

Platform support

OS	tested	notes
Arch Linux	yes	pacman for system deps; CUDA / ROCm / Vulkan all supported
macOS (Apple Silicon)	install path	brew + Xcode CLT; Metal acceleration
Debian / Ubuntu	install path	apt; GPU runtime install is distro-specific, prints the package list
Fedora	install path	dnf; same caveat as Debian
Windows	no	not supported

Output

A typical publish --summerize sermon.mp4 produces sermon.summary.md that looks roughly like:

# Fatal Sleep

**Speaker:** Rev. Hayford
**Scripture:** Romans 13:11–14, 1 Thessalonians 5:6–8, Ephesians 5:14

## Overview
A 2-4 sentence plain-English summary of the central message.

## Key Points
- ...

## Scripture & References
- Romans 13:11 — "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep..."
- ...

## Application / Call to Action
- ...

## Memorable Quote
> "..."

--spotify path.html writes the same content as the small HTML subset that Spotify-for-Podcasters' show-notes editor accepts (<b>, <i>, <a>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, <p>).

--clip writes <input>.clip.mp4 (or .m4a for audio inputs). Video clips are 1080×1920 portrait, ≤1 GiB.

Requirements

tool	required for	install on Arch	install on macOS
ffmpeg	always	pacman -S ffmpeg	brew install ffmpeg
whisper-cli	transcription	pacman -S whisper.cpp (CPU) or build from source for GPU	brew install whisper-cpp (Metal) or build
ggml model	transcription	downloaded by make install	downloaded by make install
claude CLI	--summarizer claude-cli (default)	comes with Claude Code	same
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	--summarizer claude-api	env var	env var
wl-copy / xclip / pbcopy	--copy flag	wayland default; pacman -S xclip for X11	pbcopy ships with macOS

make install walks you through these.

Building from source

go build -o publish .

Zero external Go dependencies — stdlib only. go.sum is empty.

.
├── main.go                       flat flagset, mode dispatch, orchestration
├── prompts/
│   ├── church-service.md         summary system prompt
│   └── clip-selector.md          clip-selector system prompt
├── internal/
│   ├── audio/                    ffmpeg → 16kHz mono WAV
│   ├── transcribe/               whisper.cpp wrapper, segments, mm:ss helper
│   ├── summarize/                pluggable LLM backends (CLI + Anthropic API)
│   ├── clip/                     LLM clip selection + ffmpeg cut
│   └── output/                   markdown→Spotify HTML, clipboard
├── scripts/install.sh            interactive setup
├── Makefile
└── CLAUDE.md                     deep architecture / pipeline docs

Spelling note

Yes, --summerize is intentionally spelled with an "e" — sermon + summarize, the original name of the project. The internal Go package uses standard summarize; only the user-facing flag and binary keep the pun.